Photo: Guo Wenbin

 
Wild speculation on the military use of the new Chinese optical remote sensing satellite Gaofen-13 that was launched into planned orbit on early Monday morning is not based on facts but paranoid imagination, a Chinese aerospace expert said on Monday.

Carrying the latest member of the civilian China High-resolution Earth Observation System (CHEOS) Gaofen-13, a Long March-3B carrier rocket took off from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Southwest China’s Sichuan Province around 1 am Monday. The satellite’s developer China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation confirmed the success of the launch about an hour later.

Some foreign media including the New York-based news portal dwnews floated a groundless theory that the Gaofen-13 could be a de facto spy satellite, and all Gaofen satellites are of “obvious military use.”

According to an official press release sent by the Chinese space authority to the Global Times on Monday, Gaofen-13 is a high-orbit satellite that will mainly be used to conduct missions including land surveys, crop yield estimations, environmental protection, weather forecasting and early warnings, as well as disaster prevention and mitigation. 

The Monday mission marked the 349th flight of the Long March carrier rocket series, read the press release. 

The press release did not detail the measurements of the optical appliance onboard the spacecraft. US spacenews.com paid close attention to the Monday mission, saying that the satellite was on its way to the geostationary orbit, which was not mentioned in the official press release.

Gaofen-4 was previously the only satellite in geostationary orbit, the US media reported.

The use of a satellite is determined by the devices onboard, rather than when it is launched during the day, or what orbit it is sent into. And from what we know about the satellite now, it is very loose speculation to label its usage as a military spy satellite, Wang Yanan, chief editor of Aerospace Knowledge magazine, told the Global Times.

The hyping of the Gaofen-13, by some foreign media, especially those from the US, reflects their paranoid state of mind over the global situation and even guilty conscience, observers noted. 

Wang believes that China’s Gaofen satellites are ideal for civilian use for its vast coverage and high resolution observation capability and it is what they are primarily designed for, while they also possess technical readiness and could be used for military purpose during extreme times, just like satellites from other countries.